Paterno

Paterno centers on Joe Paterno, the longtime head football coach at Penn State, whose record-setting career unravels in 2011 when his former assistant Jerry Sandusky is accused of sexually abusing children. As the allegations become public, Paterno is dismissed from the position he held for decades, and the film follows him as he confronts what he knew and whether he should have acted sooner on early warnings.

Barry Levinson directed the drama, the twenty-sixth film of the twenty-eight he has made, arriving between The Wizard of Lies and The Survivor, from a screenplay by John C. Richards and Debora Cahn. Al Pacino plays Paterno, with Kathy Baker as his wife Sue and a credited cast of 131. The production was handled by Pressman Film, Sony Pictures Television Studios, HBO Films and The Levinson/Fontana Company, and the film runs 105 minutes.

Released in 2018 as a television movie, it holds a 6.5 rating on IMDb from roughly 8,200 votes and a 6.2 on TMDB from a much smaller base of 194 votes. The critics' rating stands at 7.1 from 39 reviews, higher than the audience scores, suggesting reviewers responded to the film more favorably than general viewers did.